


Honesty // Trust

by duckfresco



Series: Yes, Too [2]
Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Aaron dealing with some of his internalized shame : ( poor hon, Family, Incest, M/M, Nicky Hemmick is Full of Love, Sibling Incest, Smut, katelyn/aaron and andreil are mentioned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-31
Updated: 2019-03-31
Packaged: 2019-12-27 01:38:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18294233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/duckfresco/pseuds/duckfresco
Summary: Today they were telling Nicky.(Smut is not until after the break.)





	Honesty // Trust

Today they were telling Nicky.  
  
It was penciled into Aaron’s calendar in purple writing: Nicky, after lunch. It was underlined, so Aaron wouldn’t forget it (as if he could). It wasn’t circled, because at the moment of writing, circling it was impossibly terrifying.  
  
His hands were sweating. He wiped them on his trousers. He’d worn khaki instead of denim today. His stint in red-eyed academia had given him an appreciation for the armor of crisp white shirts and ironed pants. Katelyn had tied his tie for him. Five minutes before leaving Aaron had yanked it off, deciding it was too much, and she hadn’t been angry. She was too good for him.  
  
The door to the men’s restroom banged open. It was heavy, like the door of every restroom in every public transit station in the state of South Carolina, but Andrew was strong enough that it didn’t look it. He dried his hands on his jeans (Andrew had no aversion to denim), an unconscious echo of Aaron moments before, and leaned against the wall beside Aaron without bothering to find him first. Andrew always knew where he was, now. Or acted it.  
  
Maybe, when Nicky kicked them out of the family, Andrew wouldn’t leave him for dead.  
  
“Stop apocalypsizing,” Andrew said, chin set.

Aaron squeezed his eyes shut and fought down a hysterical laugh. “What’s the loss of a few family members between brothers?”  
  
He meant Nicky. He also meant, his mother. Their mother. Jesus Christ. They were both going to hell. And not even for the socially deviant fornication.  
  
Neil and Katelyn had both offered to come with. They’d been turned down, as they must have known would happen. But they’d offered anyway. How could they stand to give away such vulnerability, knowing the answer? One might as well ask Aaron himself.  
  
Nicky was going to hate them. Aaron had never truly appreciated the comfort that Nicky’s unwavering love was, until he was about to make Nicky rip it away.  
  
For a wild, desperate moment, Aaron imagined Andrew turning around and leading him back onto the train. Telling him it had all been a test. Kissing away Aaron’s indignant, relieved shouts, and letting him wallow in his shame and secrecy until it, inevitably, ate him away to bone. Aaron had seen the decayed remains of many an historic patient in both photograph and, occasionally, lack-of-flesh. Deceit was deadly to Andrew, but it was guilt that was Aaron’s undoing. This trip was a necessity for them both.  
  
None of it needed to be said. All of it, Aaron wished, had been. Andrew pushed away from the wall, arms crossed, shoulders filling out his t-shirt (Aaron was an expert at not letting his eyes linger, in public. It was the work of a cursory glance to see, and the remaining time spent looking out over the crowd, to admire). Apostacy in black and crossbones. Goofus and Gallant from Highlights magazine were brothers, and they fucked. Call down the priests and the presses.

(Mom had been huge on magazine subscriptions. For a glorious year, Aaron had been able to sneak an add-on. After that year, things had not been glorious. Aaron did not like to think about that part.)  
  
Andrew did not feel this stomach-roiling mess. Andrew did not allow himself to have regrets. Andrew was currently half-way across the station, heading for the revolving door to the outside.  
  
They were meeting Nicky at a park. Neutral ground. The open air could hide their voices, if they talked low enough. And they weren’t near the water. Water carried sound, Aaron knew, the dotted line of a lesson he barely remembered, something about harmonics. Why couldn’t he have Andrew’s perfect memory, too?  
  
( _I’m the one who could use it,_ he’d shouted in Andrew’s face once, the day before an exam. He hadn’t bothered to change out of his vomited-upon scrubs. Aaron remembered that detail, because when he’d woken up the next morning—after a bare three hours of sleep, forced on himself despite the panicked hammer of his heart—he’d found a clean set of scrubs folded by his bed. It could have been Katelyn. It wasn’t.)  
  
(He’d aced the exam. The only question he’d gotten wrong had been about semen disposal. He’d left it blank on purpose. It was only his fair punishment.)

The wind was biting for this time of year, and Aaron found himself wishing he had brought a jacket. He rubbed his starched arms and shivered. Andrew didn’t seem to notice the cold. Aaron attempted to trip him.  
  
“Very mature,” Andrew said, dodging. He made a rude gesture. Aaron returned it. For a moment, the anxiety suffocating him lessened.  
  
Normally Nicky would have begged uncomfortably protracted sanctuary at Aaron’s spare bedroom (Andrew refused to keep one, on principle) for one of Erik’s business trips to the States, but on the phone Nicky  had said this was last minute and barely two days, just enough to touch down, crash in a hotel room for a few hours, and turn around. He had been apologetic; nervous; joking. Aaron had found himself relieved he wouldn’t have to host Nicky and his husband, and then sorry. Their family had been broken for so long Aaron wasn’t not sure they could be normal if they tried.  
  
Of course he missed Nicky.  
  
Aaron missed everyone who left.  
  
Nicky was waiting for them on the bench indicated by his emoji-garnished text, legs crossed and hands in his armpits. He was wearing some kind of draping sweater that looked about as hardy as Aaron’s thin dress shirt. A woman pushing a stroller passed him. Nicky waved under the hood, cooing, and then caught sight of Aaron and Andrew and expanded his wave to encompass them. The sweater was purple.  
  
For a long time, Aaron had distained Nicky’s flamboyance. It had taken work, painful work, to teach himself otherwise. Now he envied it. It wasn’t that Nicky’s sweater was anything that he himself would wear. It was that Nicky _could._  
  
He hadn’t told anyone at the hospital he even liked men. Much less…what they were about to tell Nicky.  
  
Oh, Jesus.

Andrew tapped a finger in the crook of Aaron’s elbow. His hands were icy. “Calm down.”  
  
“I can’t,” Aaron snapped. His vision was going blurry around the edges. They were here. Reality marched inexorably on. Even if Andrew were to try stop them now, Aaron didn’t think he’d be able to halt the machine that was this day, this revelation. It would burst from them across the green and Nicky would reject them just the same.  
  
Andrew was not a tactile person in private. In public, he put austerity to shame. So when he placed the full of his hand on Aaron’s arm, Aaron stilled. Surprise, it turned out, was effective at derailing panic attacks.

“I will not let him hurt you,” Andrew said.

But what about you, Aaron thought. He forced his spine upright. It was like bending steel. Maybe, if he could weld himself to Andrew, he would never have to let him go. But no. He didn’t want that. He didn’t want to continue to be a burden Andrew would bear.  
  
“Us,” he said. He flexed his arm once in Andrew’s grasp, an acknowledgement that would not take from Andrew any liberties of touch. “ _We_ will not let him hurt _us_.”  
  
Andrew’s throat worked. Aaron shaved every day, but Andrew did not, and the blond stubble scuffed pencil-drawn outlines around his emotion. “If we keep him waiting he’ll be insufferable.”  
  
“He’s that already,” Aaron said. He could walk over there without Andrew’s hand on his arm, now. Andrew’s hand slipped away without Aaron having to say it. Every time the two of them found synchronicity, Aaron’s chest hummed with unvoiced rightness.  
  
Harmonics.  
  
Nicky threw his arms around Aaron as soon as they were within distance, and Aaron bore it with gritted teeth. It wasn’t that he hated Nicky hugging him; he just hated Nicky hugging him. At least Nicky knew not to try the same with Andrew.  
  
“You’ve been very mysterious,” Nicky said, sitting back down on the bench and twiddling his fingers. His smile was blinding. It had taken Aaron years to realize that was when it covered the most concern. “Should I have brought a shovel to bury a body?”  
  
Andrew waited to respond just long enough for Nicky’s eyes to go wide (Aaron hid the corner of a smile behind a cleared throat). “No.” He sat on the bench an arm’s reach from Nicky, legs spread, feet planted. His black combat boots looked especially battle-ready beside Nicky’s glittery canvas sneakers. Aaron sat beside him, and tried not to let his brain spin a treatise on the metaphorical nature of sturdy shoes.

They sat.  
  
A bird hopped by on one leg, the other tucked up to his brilliantly colored chest. He cocked an eye at the three of them, and then, when they failed to produce edible morsels, hopped away. The baby in the stroller that Nicky had been talking to gurgled and reached out both hands, and the bird erupted into flight, inciting those around him to the same; a flare of feathers that set people cursing and laughing, scrambling to take photographs. Under cover of the din Aaron heard Andrew let out a short, tight breath.  
  
Andrew had never done this before, he realized. Aaron had coughed up the basic information about his high school girlfriends at Nicky’s insistence, and after Nicky’s prying had found him with Katelyn his freshman year, he had admitted to a clandestine arrangement. Andrew, on the other hand, had never said explicitly that he was dating Neil. Certainly not to Nicky. Perhaps not ever. He had no idea how to proceed.  
  
This was something Aaron could do for him. For both of them.  
  
It must have been Nicky’s presence, for the back of Aaron’s head presented him the half-remembered prayer: _Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil…_  
  
Aaron was terrified.  
  
He said, “Andrew and I are together.”  
  
He looked at Nicky as he said it, his heart in his closing throat, his hands twisted on his knees before him. Andrew twitched violently, and repressed it. Nicky frowned.  
  
“Well of course you are, you’re both here,” he said.  
  
Aaron dug his fingernails into his trousers. “ _Together,_ Nicky. Like you and Erik.” He closed his eyes and waited for the blow.

He waited.  
  
He waited.  
  
Andrew’s presence beside him made the hair on his arms raise up inside his shirt, electric and seeking. How could his body radiate such heat when his fingers were so cold? They breathed in tandem, for it was the only way Aaron could. In and out _. I will fear no evil: for thou art with me…_  
  
What was the next part of the prayer?  
  
It didn’t matter.  
  
They watched the knowledge settle on Nicky, thigh-beside-thigh but not touching, breathing. The hair on Andrew’s arms was also raised. Andrew was clenching his jaw, and Aaron realized he was as well. Nicky’s brow furrowed deeply, his mouth worked without sound. Did he realize he was both judge and axeman? Both Aaron and Andrew had stood before a judge, but only Andrew had heard the condemnation, _guilty._  
  
Andrew’s legs moved, heels digging into the earth. In another moment he would stand, and Aaron would with him, and they would never see Nicky again.  
  
(By accepting Andrew, Aaron had forsook the rest of his family. He had known this at the truth of the death of his mother. Nicky’s love had been but stolen time.)  
  
“Are you happy?” Nicky said.  
  
The world was caving in, but it took a short break. “What?” said Aaron.  
  
Nicky was smiling, not his brilliant smile from before, but something soft and earnest. “Are you _happy_.”  
  
Aaron said, “Yes.” He said it without thinking, which had, not so long ago, been an impossible dream. Andrew said nothing. He would not admit to goodness. But Aaron knew that in his way he was happy too, knew it his blood and breath and deepest marrow; knew it because Andrew was his twin, and they would always be tethered, so. He was proud of Andrew, he realized. He wanted to take Andrew’s hand, but they were in public, so he did not.  
  
Nicky said, “Then so am I.” He tilted his head back on the bench, looking up to the sky, and sighed, long and gusty, chest deflating to concavity. “Speak of a relief. I really did think somebody had died.”  
  
Aaron said, because he had to be sure, “You’re okay with this?” The toes of Andrew’s boots nudged his own polished shoes, and Aaron almost jumped, not because it was bad (it was the opposite, another comfort Andrew was allowing them), but because he had not expected anything gentle to come of today. It was as if someone had taken Aaron to the top of a roller coaster and then pulled the breaker before the drop, leaving him hovering in anticipation of a scream.

“Love is met with enough hatred already,” Nicky said. He touched the gold band on his ring finger without looking, a motion habitual enough to be unconscious. “I’m not going to add to it.” He propped an arm on the back of the bench, rolling his head towards the two of them, his smile still trembling honesty. “Thank you for telling me.”  
  
Aaron’s throat had closed too far for him to speak. He nodded. Andrew’s boot pressed harder against his foot. Aaron pressed back.  
  
“Next month, Erik is out here again for a banquet,” Nicky said. “And I don’t let my hubby travel alone. The two of you are invited. As always.”  
  
“Sounds like shit,” said Andrew.  
  
“We’ll be there,” Aaron agreed.

* * *

As soon as they were back inside Andrew and Neil’s apartment Andrew had Aaron by the mouth. He kissed him hard into the wall in the entrance way, heedless of the photo frames Aaron knocked aside in his enthusiastic rebuttal. His hands clawed at Andrew’s shoulders after gasped permission, digging into the muscle and making Aaron’s knees weak at his brother’s steadiness. Andrew’s mouth was fire. He smeared a streak of it down Aaron’s neck, and Aaron arched against an immortalized jersey signed _Kevin Day_.

(He’d given Neil shit for that every day since it had been hung up. It was funnier when you learned that it was the result of a bet Neil’s terrible luck had worked its usual magic on.)  
  
His shirt was unbuttoned to the waist. Andrew’s teeth found the hinge of his jaw. Aaron’s hips jerked forward, his toes curling in his shoes.  
  
“ _God_ ,” he said. “Andrew, fuck me.”  
  
He realized as soon as it had left his mouth. Andrew drew back, one forearm still bracketing Aaron in, the other held away like the windup to a punch.  Aaron was not afraid. He knew Andrew would not strike him.    
  
“You want that,” Andrew said, his eyes liquid in the reflection of the kitchen light. Neither of them had bothered to flip the switch in the hall.  
  
“Yes,” said Aaron. He had to loosen his grip, stroking through Andrew’s hair from temple to the dimpled nape of his neck, to control the surge of his desperate blood. “Or whatever you can give me.” This was new, between them. Nicky’s acceptance had set Aaron’s heart soaring as high as the birds at the park, and he was greedy for Andrew, his other self, the other half of his completeness. He said, “You are not going to hurt me. Asshole.”  
  
Andrew shuddered under Aaron’s tender fingers, the tendons on his neck standing in sharp relief. “Fingering,” he said. “Yes or no?”  
  
“Yes,” said Aaron, mouth opening, lips seeking. Andrew kissed him, possessive, and Aaron moaned.  
  
Aaron was submissive in bed. It was something that he had tried to change and could not, without huddling afterward in the darkness, guilt twisting his viserca in knots. He required a steady hand and an encouraging tone, and the understanding that he might, afterwards, have to lie silently with his emotions. Needy; high maintenance. One girlfriend (her name had been Laura; Aaron pretended he had forgotten, but he had not) had told him that sex with him was too much work.

“Grow some balls if you want to drain them,” she’d said when she’d broken it off, the hum of her vanity stick-shift rumbling under her palm. Bad things happened to Aaron’s family in cars. “Some advice so the next girl won’t have to go through what I did.”  
  
(It had been a long time before Aaron had taken his clothes off in front of Katelyn.)

Now, his submissiveness was a gift. No: a foreordination, slotting perfectly with Andrew’s need for complete control. The complexities of their trauma responses were a psychologist’s playground. The more Andrew touched him, the more Aaron melted, his mind quieting, his body unfurling for Andrew’s pleasure. Like a pennant. Like a flower. Like a truth.  
  
“You will sit in my lap,” Andrew said, as he pulled Aaron’s shirt off, sleeves crumpling. The careless wrinkles were more obscene than the throb of Aaron’s cock. “You will tell me if you need to stop. You will not lie.”  
  
“Yes,” Aaron said to every condition, lifting his hands out of the way so Andrew could unzip his trousers. His belly clenched as Andrew dragged perfunctory knuckles down the length of him, through the fabric, and filled with air when Andrew didn’t linger. He knew what it looked like when his twin was teasing. It frustrated and inflamed him in equal parts. Aaron understood without asking that Andrew was not yet ready to see his own face gasping up at him from the flatness of the mattress, writhing at intimate intrusion. It made Aaron’s chest ache that Andrew was agreeing—was wanting—even his fingers inside him. Fuck, Aaron wanted Andrew’s fingers inside him. He bit his lower lip and bent his knees against the impulse to rock forward.  
  
Andrew’s eyes flashed dark, approving. Aaron’s cock twitched; Andrew had not even touched him. Andrew curled a hand over the ball of Aaron’s shoulder and yanked him forward, biting at his mouth. When he opened to fuck his tongue against Aaron’s own, a growl came out with it. Andrew was fire, and Aaron burned.  
  
With a last, hard-pressing sweep of his tongue against Aaron’s lower lip, Andrew stepped back and sprawled himself out on the bed, propped on the pillows. His jeans were tented, and Aaron’s mouth was all saliva. He swallowed to clear it and climbed up after him, hovering over until Andrew’s hands clamped around his hips and pressed down. Aaron was naked, and Andrew clothed, but that was all right. That was good; the scrape of denim on the insides of Aaron’s thighs reminded him where he was, and with whom. He welcomed the roughness. He wanted Andrew to rub him raw.  
  
He had nothing to keep from Andrew, anymore. He was flayed, and Andrew held the knife; and Aaron let him, because Andrew would just as soon press the handle into Aaron’s own hands. _I will fear no evil: for the only evil my brother giveth me is pleasure. And that is no evil. Aaron. That is no evil at all._  
  
Andrew didn’t bother to warm up the lube, because he was a dick. The shock of cold both took Aaron out of his head and poured him back into it. He gasped and pressed down against Andrew’s finger. Andrew kept his touch light, circling Aaron’s rim, and Aaron cursed him.  
  
“You’re more eager for this than I expected,” Andrew said. The slip of the lube was maddening. It only allowed the barest hint of friction.  
  
“Katelyn fucks me all the time,” Aaron said. He tried to make it harsh, but Andrew flexed his thighs half-way through, rocking Aaron up, and it turned into a gasp.  
  
“Not like I will,” Andrew said, rasping low. In Aaron’s sober mind, he knew he did not love one more than he loved the other, and that Andrew and Katelyn had left mutual resentment behind years ago; under the fog of arousal, the dark hunger of Andrew’s promise curled hot in his abdomen, the rest of his limbs shivering with comparative chill. He was so very hard. Andrew had _still_ not touched him.  
  
“Andrew,” he begged, as Andrew’s fingertip stroked slowly over his entrance. “Yes, it’s still a _fucking_ yes, Jesus.”  
  
He was falling apart. Andrew was there to catch him. The stroking fingertip paused; pointed; pressed in, a slide so easy Aaron fell backwards on his hands, arms extended behind him. It wasn’t a position he could hold for long, but that didn’t matter, not when the full length of one of Andrew’s strong fingers was pushing thick inside him. Andrew’s hands were weapons, calloused and blunt. He had made them so. Hands to protect. Andrew would take Aaron apart, but never would he stop holding him together.  
  
_And the Lord said unto Cain, where is Abel thy brother? Inside me, Lord. Oh God. Oh, God._  
  
Andrew’s finger crooked, and Aaron’s hips humped down, a ragged cry torn from his throat. Of course Andrew did not have to fumble and search for the spot to reduce Aaron to inconherency. He knew Aaron’s body as well as he knew his own; they were the same. The finger twitched, and then started to drag over Aaron’s prostate in circles, speeding. Aaron shook, his arms only keeping him up because they were locked at wrist and elbows. He needed a hand on his cock. He needed--  
  
_“Andrew—!"_  
  
“Shhh,” Andrew murmured. His finger withdrew and Aaron almost sobbed, but then it was back, with another, shoving deep and good. Aaron bucked his hips, rucking up the plushness of the turned-down comforter. A tear gathered at the corner of his eye and he blinked it away, not wanting to scare Andrew, not wanting this to stop.  
  
Heat above him, a hand on his back: Andrew was pressing close to pull Aaron back over his lap, and the change in the angle of Andrew’s fingers inside him made Aaron clench down hard. He shook his numb arms and reached for Andrew’s hair, gathering breath for the question, but Andrew was already nodding and Aaron fastened his grip around curls the same texture as his own. He was leaking across his belly. He was leaking from his skin.  
  
“Let go,” said Andrew, in German, and swallowed Aaron’s answering moan. He thrust his fingers up, spreading, and Aaron writhed. The pressure was building between his hips for him to come, but it wasn’t enough, it wouldn’t be, not until--  
  
Andrew closed a hand around Aaron’s cock.  
  
“ _Yes,”_ Aaron said, or thought he did. His brain was wide, white emptiness, nothing in his body but pleasure. He could not stop the motion of his hips now if he tried. He fucked up into Andrew’s fist and back against his fingers, jerking too much for a regular rhythm, but it was too good to try to slow and find one. He could feel his teeth knock against Andrew’s as his mouth fell open, to close to concentrate on kissing. “Andrew. _Andrew!”_  
  
To come by his brother’s hands: this was a revelation.  
  
When the aftershocks had finished sparking through him, lifting his hips anew each time, Aaron pulled himself off Andrew’s fingers and gripped the hair at the back of Andrew's neck, leaning their foreheads together. His head was dizzy, his mouth desert-dry.  
  
“Am I allowed to get you off?” he asked. Quiet. Willing, not demanding.  
  
Andrew’s jaw clenched. He removed his hand from Aaron’s cock and wiped it on the bedsheets. In the morning, that would be disgusting. “Your hand,” he said, rough.  
  
For his brother to come by his own hands: this too, a revelation.  
  
Aaron knew Andrew’s cock as Andrew had known the inside of Aaron’s body, the sensitive ridge under the head, the pleasure gained from the right kind of twist at the base. Andrew was silent when he came, pulsing hot over Aaron’s fist, and there was honesty in his lack of ostentation. He neither tried to hide his orgasm, or announce it. It simply _was._ Aaron stroked him through it and withdrew when Andrew grunted, wiping his hand on the sheet beside the drying streaks of his own come.  
  
There was no sound in the room but their heavy breathing. Synchronization: in and out.  
  
Aaron moved to get off of Andrew, and Andrew’s hand shot out, closing around his wrist with painful tightness. It said _, stay_.  
  
Aaron did.

**Author's Note:**

> Aaron’s an interesting challenge to write—we don’t see a lot of him, and only through Neil’s eyes, in the series! Added to that is the fact that this is post-series, so after some healing has taken place. I had fun with this! As you can see I especially liked playing up the effect of the time he spent with Maria and Luther; he was hardly a stranger to them at that (horrible) Thanksgiving.
> 
> (Obviously there’s no shame in being loud during sex. I just think that if Andrew did, he would be putting it on, and he’s not likely to do that. Unless he’s being a little shit and making fun, I suppose)
> 
> I went back and forth on what Nicky’s reaction would be, but I think at his core Nicky is love and acceptance. It’s one of the things I admire most about him <3
> 
> (Aaron: I'm the Cain you're the Abel)  
> (Andrew: Um? Excuse? Me? Wrong)


End file.
